Archive for February, 2019

“This ruling blows the insulin racket wide open,’’ said Steve Berman, a plaintiffs’ lawyer who is one of the leaders of the potential class-action case. The ruling “clears the way for us to begin obtaining discovery from the manufacturers and PBMs so we can shine the light on exactly what has driven insulin prices sky-high,’’ he said.

“Direct primary care (DCP) — a fee-based model that gives individuals unlimited access to a primary care doctor for anywhere between $60 to $150 a month, without insurance being billed — is the “future of healthcare….”

Last month, we received our license to sell Association Health Plans (AHPs) to medical groups in Texas through the Oklahoma State Medical Association (OSMA). They have a proven track record of providing significant savings to their members and offer a broad range of health plans.

Just like 4.3 million other Texans, they have zero health coverage. They simply cannot afford health insurance. “We don’t have health insurance because it’s just outrageous. We have to choose food or clothing over health insurance, and food and clothing are just going to come first,” Kevin Doetticher said.

Industry wide, transparency is not the standard. ProPublica sent a list of questions to 10 of the largest broker agencies, some worth $1 billion or more, including Marsh & McLennan, Aon and Willis Towers Watson, asking if they took bonuses and commissions from insurance companies, and whether they disclosed them to their clients. Four firms declined to answer; the others never responded despite repeated requests.

“Renegade PCPs long for independent practices where their patient care decisions are not so influenced by their employers’ interests……………….By recapturing control of care and cost, they also are re-establishing primary care’s primacy within health care……………..”

The state of North Carolina has adopted Reference Based Pricing for their state employee benefit program to become effective in 2020. The reference price will be pegged at 177% of Medicare. That has caused an uproar with the state’s hospitals and they are fighting back hard.

McAllen Independent School District in deep South Texas is set to interview the top three finalist for the district’s insurance consultant position this week. MISD employee benefit program is self-insured and administered by Blue Cross & Blue Shield.

“It’s an intriguing way to lower costs for both physicians and health plans, and it could reduce premiums for patients. It also could enable doctors to wrestle more contract-negotiating leverage out of the hands of the market’s dominant health plans ― and in some cases, contracting with them might not even be necessary.”

“We are taking that wasted money and artificially inflating the cost of health care to the point that nobody can afford it without government continuing the death spiral of spending, monopolizing, and price inflation.”

Greenlight Re Innovations, part of specialist property and casualty insurer Greenlight Capital Re, has announced an investment in Sana Benefits, a Texas-based third-party administrator (TPA) focused on the self-insured health market……………...

I’ve been asked many times if there was one thing, one moment, that led me to leave my job at a big health insurance corporation. Yes, there was, and it occurred five days before Christmas in 2007. That was when a beautiful 17-year-old girl named Nataline Sarkisyan passed away, days after the company I worked for refused to pay for a liver transplant that her doctors believed would save her life. A few days after Nataline’s death, I turned in my notice.

With steady growth in the last four decades, self-funded plans are now the most common type of health plan that workers are enrolled in across the United States. Various sources put this number at nearly 70% and climbing. Nearly all self-funded employee benefit plans are managed through a third party administrator (TPA) firm, an independent organization that assists with overall plan operations, benefit coordination and claims processing.